Fragmented Love
by ntlpurpolia
Summary: Jack and Rose meet over and over again throughout their lives. They will be torn apart but fate keeps bringing them back together.


**ROSE **Dewitt Bukater was six years old and ill in bed with a fever. she had been this way for three days now, and felt trapped in her small, stuffy room._ I'm a princess in a tower with no one to rescue me_, she thought gloomily.

**JACK **Dawson was nine years of age, working as a gardeners' apprentice. Coincidentally- or as some thought of it, by the workings of fate- at the Dewitt Bukater household.

**ROSE**, in a sudden surge of strength, ventured from the confines of her overly blanketed bed to the window, opening it in the hopes of fresh air. A smile graced her innocent face as a pretty orange and black speckled butterfly flew upwards towards the window. Suddenly, she stumbled for no reason at all, and dropped a bracelet. Not just any bracelet, but the one she'd taken from her mother's jewelry box that Ruth DeWitt Bukater permitted no one to go into but herself. She had only wanted to try it on, but it was too big for her small wrists so she'd simply held it in her hands, imagining a bold knight on a grey horse -she'd never liked the colour white- coming to take her away from this dreadful life of cotillions and so-called 'social gatherings' which were mainly for gossip about who wore what dress for the fifth time and who got pregnant before marrying someone twice their age, anyways.

**JACK **looked up from the steadily increasing mound of soil that he was shoveling out of a pit that the gardener hoped to grow rosebushes in, and noticed a small object hurtling towards the ground from an open window. Wiping the sweat that had beaded along his brow, he shielded his eyes with a calloused hand and squinting, trying to make out the item. Finally he gave up and had nearly decided to go back to digging when the piece of jewelry hit him on the head. He picked it up off the ground and examined it, questioning its worth in his head. It was probably worth quite a sum, and if he sold it he'd have a rather large amount of money on his hands. Jack was envisioning his plans for after he'd sold the bracelet, when he heard a sudden wail of despair- not a sob, but a wail.

There _was _a difference, despite what some people thought. Sobbing was for the weak, but wails of despair were for people who'd lost hope in everything else. He'd heard the sound from his mother's lips when his father had died, burned alive in a fire. A tragic accident, blared the headlines, but the family knew it was due to the debts he'd owed that asshole, Caledon Hockley. A steel tycoon and a spoiled brat if there ever was one, who'd probably had everything in life handed to him on a silver platter -no, a _gold _platter for the rich man's son. Jack's father had worked for his company and borrowed money from him. And when he'd never repaid the debts, boom! There went Jack's father and his mother's sanity. She'd died a month later, of pneumonia, but in his heart Jack knew it was of grief and heartbreak.

It simply wasn't fair that people like Jack's father had to work all their lives and not even make a quarter of what Caledon Hockley had owned since birth, while he didn't have to do anything and get richer and richer because of a family name and a damned inheritance.

But that aside, Jack _had _to return the bracelet.

**ROSE **let out a high-pitched wail before she could stop herself, and winced, hand going to her throat. She'd had a sore throat yesterday along with the fever and it hadn't yet gone away. She ran a hand through her tousled hair, a nervous tic of hers. Suddenly, the bracelet flung itself over the windowsill in addition to a hand.

As Rose watched, unsure of what to do, the hand grew into the tanned arm of a nine year old boy whose entire body appeared in her room after much exertion.

"You could've helped. After all, I did get your bracelet back."

As any six year old girl did after being chastised, she began to get mad. "Well, how am I supposed to know that you were giving it back and not being creepy and coming into my room!"

"My hand was holding the bracelet when it went over your window."

Rose huffed, annoyed to be defeated. "Whatever."

The boy seemed to take this in stride. "Hey, if I got your bracelet back, don't I at least get to know your name?"

"It's not my bracelet. It's my mother's."

"You looked pretty upset about it though, Rosie."

"Don't call me Rosie. My name is Rose."

"Close enough, Rosie." The boy smiled, showing white teeth that contrasted sharply against the tanned skin of his face.

"Don't. Call. Me. Rosie."

"Okay, okay!" Seeing that Rose now looked quite vexed, he backtracked. "why don't we start over? Pretend this never happened."

"All right."

"I'm Jack Dawson." Jack stuck out his hand for Rose to shake, and she obliged.

"Rose Dewitt Bukater."

And so began a summer of friendship and adventure.


End file.
